**Troy Taylor:** There’s a story about a phantom riverboat that I always liked, about how if you heard the riverboat whistle blow on a foggy morning but you never saw the boat, that meant that someone who worked down on the docks was going to die within the next seven days. **Amanda McGowan:** A lot of old waterfront towns really play up the quaint and cutesy factor, you know, with a brunch cruise on a steamboat or something like that. But in Alton, Illinois, the vibe is a little bit more Widow’s Bay. **Troy:** Now, I don’t know how this story got started. There are rumors that it got started because of a riverboat that disappeared one year, but nobody knows for sure.
An Explorer's Guide to the Hidden Wonders of the United States Introducing Our Newest Book: _America Obscura_. Available Nov 10, 2026 **Amanda:** It makes sense. Alton is on the Mississippi River, which was the lifeblood of the city for much of its history.
But the Mississippi is pretty unpredictable and it was often dangerous. Shipwrecks were really common. One stretch of the river in Southern Illinois was known as the graveyard because so many ships were lost there. **Troy:** The depths are always changing and they didn’t have depth finders and radar and GPS and things.
And so, you know, people were dying on a regular basis on that river. And that’s a lot of stories. That’s a lot of ghost stories. **Amanda:** Today, Alton doesn’t depend on the river like it used to, and shipwrecks are, of course, a lot less common.
But in Alton today, ghost stories still rule the day. **Troy:** I will say we are the most haunted small town in the Midwest. And one of the most haunted small towns in America, for sure. **Amanda:** I’m Amanda McGowan, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today’s episode was brought to you in partnership with Enjoy Illinois.
And today we’re going to Alton, which has been called the most haunted small town in America. It’s a place where practically every building has its own ghost story. And bubbling underneath all this lore is the fascinating history of a town shaped by the wild and unpredictable waters of the Mississippi River.
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